EHang refutes claims in Wolfpack Research report; provides update on new facility site in Yunfu

EHang has released pic­tures show­ing the devel­op­ment of its new man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Yun­fu City, Chi­na, and says pro­duc­tion of its aer­i­al autonomous vehi­cles (AAVs) is expect­ed to start in Q2 2021.

With a total gross floor area of 24,000 square metres, the new site is near­ly three times the size of EHang’s exist­ing pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Guangzhou. In a short video uploaded to YouTube, it will be home to the com­pa­ny’s newest aer­i­al vehi­cle assem­bly lines, a com­put­er numer­i­cal con­trol (CNC) pro­cess­ing cen­tre, paint­ing work­shop and car­bon fiber com­pos­ite mate­ri­als pro­cess­ing area.  In addi­tion, there is also a research and train­ing cen­tre and out­door flight test ver­ti­port. A facil­i­ty tour is planned for June 2021.

After the Yun­fu facil­i­ty is up and run­ning, the major role of the facil­i­ty in Guangzhou will be grad­u­al­ly migrat­ed to focus on sup­port­ing EHang’s efforts to expand new R&D efforts.

This news comes days after the activist short-sell­er Wolf­pack Research released a report ear­li­er this week, which alleges EHang is ‘an elab­o­rate stock pro­mo­tion, built on large­ly fab­ri­cat­ed rev­enues based on sham sales con­tracts with a cus­tomer who appears to us to be more inter­est­ed in help­ing inflate the val­ue of its invest­ment in EHang than its prod­ucts.’ Fol­low­ing its release, stocks in EHang plum­met­ed by more than 60 per cent dur­ing trad­ing ear­li­er this week.

In Wolf­pack­’s report, it said inves­ti­ga­tors vis­it­ed EHang’s cor­po­rate head­quar­ters and its man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties in Guangzhou and Yun­fu, adding there were lit­tle signs of the build­ing being fin­ished, with no evi­dence to show ongo­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing work. The report said inves­ti­ga­tors were able to walk through premis­es with no secu­ri­ty in place to pro­tect the company’s intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP) and pro­to­types.

The report also quot­ed Mark Moore, who was pre­vi­ous­ly chief tech­nol­o­gist at Uber Ele­vate, as say­ing EHang used ‘hob­by-grade T Motors’ to man­u­fac­ture its 216 eVTOL air­craft — a state­ment EHang founder Huazhi Hu has said is ‘absolute­ly wrong’.

The day after the report was released, EHang has respond­ed to some of these alle­ga­tions via a Q&A with Mr Hu, who has said they are based on ‘shod­dy research and con­tains numer­ous errors, unsub­stan­ti­at­ed state­ments, and mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion.

EHang is regard­ed as one of the world’s advanced eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ers, with ini­tia­tives and projects across Europe. Time will tell how much this report will impact not only its rep­u­ta­tion going for­ward, but also on the devel­op­ment of var­i­ous urban air mobil­i­ty projects across the world.

It has already announced agree­ments to con­duct tri­als in Linz, Aus­tria, and Lliria, Spain and addi­tion­al­ly, it is also part of two Euro­pean Union project which will look at the idea of med­ical air mobil­i­ty and unmanned traf­fic man­age­ment, an ini­tia­tive to intro­duce urban air mobil­i­ty ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, and the Inter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion organ­i­sa­tion’s (ICAO) Ambu­lar project.